


Starfire

by aces



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-18
Updated: 2011-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-20 13:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She made her own choices, every nanosecond of her existence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starfire

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt: _The TARDIS. The reason why the Doctor's companions have tended to be female actually has little to do with the Time Lord's preferences in such matters._
> 
> I wrote this before I saw “The Doctor’s Wife” and was a little startled at how well it meshed. I’ve only done a little tweaking since, to help it fall even more in line with that story (so, y’know, spoilers).

The first journey he took her on, they witnessed the birth of a sun.

She’d been on many trips before, to star systems and individual planets and different realities, but those trips had been brief, mindless, obedient, and above all boring. And so she had left her front door unlocked, on a whim, in the hope that somebody would come inside and—make a different choice. (She really had not meant to steal a lord of time. Not _really_.)

He, he had pushed buttons and pulled levers and hit keyboards randomly, and in her surprise at this assault, she had thrown them near the birth of a sun.

He had watched from her control room, overawed. And she had felt the light blossom against the side of her shell—something like the briefest of breezes against one’s skin, she thought, lifting an image from his childish and childlike mind—starfire that imprinted itself on her outer skin.

After that, she sometimes let him pick the destinations.

*

It probably started with Vicki.

It could have started with Susan. Curious, she had extended herself lightly into Susan’s mind, while the girl slept; but he, he had furiously and metaphorically slapped her mental hand away and swore at her in a way he never had dared before (and would rarely dare again thereafter). And she, startled, had withdrawn and never tried to speak to Susan again.

Though sometimes Susan hesitantly reached out to draw a hand along her walls and furniture, whispered secrets to her that she would not—could not—share with her grandfather. Sometimes Susan settled into her, tentative and reaching, and who was she to stop somebody else who was just as curious? Susan was different from those others who called themselves lords of time, different like her grandfather. Those others had been cool, collected, systematic. Boring.

But she had never attempted to initiate comunicating with Susan again, respecting Susan’s grandfather’s choice. And then there was Vicki.

Something about Vicki reminded her of that starfire, that first time truly out in the universe without anything to anchor her to a reality she had always known. Vicki, who was in many ways so much younger than Susan had been, selfish and willful and still with a tiny spark of that fire deep down inside somewhere.

(Barbara had it too, under layers of respectability and righteousness and fear. It became more noticeable as the layers were eroded down, the more time Barbara spent traveling. Sometimes she hummed to Barbara, in the night when the woman slept, to help erode those layers; and he never interfered with her then, as he had with his granddaughter.

She liked to think of herself as a positive influence.)

*

Polly was entirely her doing. She freely admits it, refuses to feel guilty, and so she tells him, in irritated little pings and blips and her refusal to budge an inch when he tries to send her to Raxicoricofallipitorius. He grumbles and mutters and strokes her console, but she had been lonely sitting out there by herself in London again, and he had let Dodo slip away when she had _liked_ Dodo, and when Polly had arrived on her doorstep with the sailor in tow, she had immediately recognized a spark of something beautiful and vibrant and sparkling in Polly, a thin thread of golden starfire. And so she had unlocked the door to her outer plasmic shell, in the hopes—and the sure knowledge—that Polly, curious, would open it.

And so he had grumbled and muttered and stamped his foot, but he had accepted her whims in the end, as he always did.

*

 _He_ found Jamie, all of his own volition, and then he went and lost both the sailor and her Polly, and she had sulked over that for a long time. But then they discovered Victoria, another orphan who had nowhere else to go, and she knew Victoria must come with them.

“I know, old girl, I know,” he’d said, running a light hand over her console; he was much gentler in this incarnation, gentler and lighter when not brooding over the weight of the universe around him. “She simply had to come with us. Have you forgiven me yet for Polly?”

She set them down somewhere she knew they would find trouble, and she could feel his smile of gratitude seeping into her corridors.

(She admits, the mini-dress was all her own idea. Victoria had gone looking for something a little less voluminous than her own skirts, and she—well. Was it her fault if the wardrobe room rearranged itself so that only the 1960s Earth clothes were available? And was it her fault if she found she rather enjoyed the fashions of 1960s England, complete to its blue police boxes, solid and square and rather endearing?)

*

Zoë liked to think stowing away on the TARDIS was completely and solely her own idea. And she liked to let Zoë continue thinking that.

Zoë dreamed in algorithms and fractals and imaginary numbers. She _reveled_ in Zoë’s dreams, and sometimes when Zoë woke up, the young woman wore a secret smile she refused to explain to her fellow travelers.

*

She couldn’t get to know Liz Shaw. Her own fire had been tamped down, burned out by those who called themselves the lords of time. She could not feel the universe brushing against her outer skin, and her world turned cold and grey and dim. He would spend whole days talking to her, patting her, trying to lift her spirits, but his own were cold and grey and dim too, and she would sometimes drain herself from the console room, hide her self in the deepest, darkest corner of her body that she could, and weep.

They punished her as much as him, for their transgressions. She had seen the birth of a star, the death of a galaxy, life in all its shades in between, and then those lords of time had requested that she return—and when she had refused, they had sent her tumbling off with him to Earth, not to move again unless they so chose.

They knew, she supposed. They knew that she had stolen their fellow lord of time, that she sought out the starfire and could no longer be turned away, obedient and mindless and above all _boring_.

*

Jo’s rings had burned against her columns and roundels, all that cold silver and steel and gold. Sarah Jane’s fire was a brilliant white flame, hungry and dancing with a bubbling laughter that sometimes hid her fierceness. But they flitted through her life briefly, rarely traveling with her long, rarely long enough to spend time with her, sleep with her, so that she could become accustomed to their dreams and brain patterns and rhythms.

Leela refused to let her in, at first. Leela was all defensiveness and wariness, and she had been confused and hurt by this distrust, but he had pressed her buttons and pulled her levers and tapped at her keyboards soothingly, and he had talked to Leela, and eventually Leela had grown to trust her.

Leela’s dreams were full of jungles, green and lush and mysterious. She adjusted her hums accordingly, and sometimes Leela would rest a hand against her roundelled walls, and she would warm around Leela’s skin, affectionately.

*

Time ships have sexes. They are as many and varied and fluid as the multiverse itself—some of her best friends (old best friends, when she was still chained to those that called themselves the lords of time) considered themselves a gender no other sentient, non-time-traveling species could ever understand. But she had always thought of herself as she, from the nanosecond she had unraveled into existence.

She made choices about a lot of things, but this had never felt like one to her.

*

 _He_ would have kicked Romana out if he could, at first—at first; later he held an entirely different opinion about that lady of time—but she had recognized, beneath that wholly-disguised insecurity and youthful bravado, another shade of that golden starfire that burned in all her favorites.

She’d told him that, but of course he hadn’t listened, not at first. “Interfering old—” he had muttered and accidentally kicked a panel under her console, and she had sparked at him in her own irritation, and he’d reached out to pat her central rotor in apology. “Yes, yes, old girl,” he’d said, “I’m _sorry_ , but I just don’t see it.”

She’d sent a brief electrical current through the lever his hand was holding, the slightest teasing little jolt, and he’d jumped a little and glared at her, and her hum had changed pitch again, a rippling little laugh.

Romana stood on the other side of the console, smirking privately, but she’d wiped the smirk off Romana’s face when she sent that same teasing little jolt into the keyboard Romana was typing into.

(Romana let her into her dreams willingly, though the lady of time rarely dreamed. Romana let her settle into her subconscious easily, with a sigh, the way Romana might herself slip into a bubble bath. And sometimes Romana would niggle her, tickle her, tease her and laugh at her, in ways no human or most any other sentient species could.

She truly missed Romana when Romana left.)

*

Tegan refused her comfort when she would have offered it; Tegan refused to listen to her when she would have soothed the woman, helped the woman out of the maze of corridors in which she found herself. Tegan was stubborn and forthright and bull-headed and later grief-stricken and angry, and all those emotions overwhelmed her with their intensity.

(Later, though, later, after the birth of the universe and his old friend/enemy’s theft and games, Tegan slept, and she cooled Tegan’s room to the temperature Tegan preferred when sleeping, and she touched on Tegan’s dreams of her Auntie Vanessa and growing up in Brisbane, overlaying them with a thin film of comfort, and Tegan finally relaxed.)

*

“Orphans,” he muttered, puttering around the console room while the others slept. “They’re all orphans, old girl; are we making a habit of this?”

A ripple of the blinking lights along the console, a sigh. He looked up at her ceiling and smiled, leaning against her console briefly.

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose I like them too.” He frowned briefly, then, and glared around her console room. “But _you_ should behave yourself,” he added, shaking a finger. Another ripple of lights, innocent and questioning. “You’re becoming a terrible flirt in your old age.”

That warranted a nip of an electric charge, and he snatched his finger back and looked about himself again, wounded. She deepened her hum, a little sheepish, a little apologetic, and he smiled again, a little sheepish himself.

He patted her console. “You do have excellent taste; I’ll give you that, old girl.”

*

They all held special places in her—heart, for lack of a better term in human speech. Nyssa’s presence was like a cool, calming spring rain shower; Peri was another bright bubble of youth, who sometimes woke up hot and bothered and uncomfortably semi-aware why. Melanie ran through her corridors with a joyous and freeing laugh, and Ace discovered one of her numerous labs. They all left their marks, clothes strewn on her floors and notebooks scattered on her desks and psychic imprints seeping into her roundelled walls.

Sometimes he wandered her corridors, seeking the memory of these old friends when lonely or missing someone in particular. He always had to look for himself; she wouldn’t tell him. She had taught him early in their partnership that not everything belonged to him.

She still sometimes let him pick their destinations.

*

He chose Rose. She was glad of it; she could not choose, then; they were both damaged, drifting, lost.

He chose Rose, but she might just have given him a little nudge. (She might also just have reprogrammed their destination so that they ended up back in that London alley in 2005, when he would have let the shop girl go. Perhaps.)

She found it hard to forgive Rose, though, when Rose ripped open her—heart—and stole a piece of her. She vacated Rose’s dreams then, and Rose sometimes woke up and wondered why she felt so disappointed and lonely.

*

She found Donna—or rather, Donna found her, that second time, calling and calling for her to come back—and Martha. She was sometimes a little disappointed in Martha, who did not respond to her hums and dreams as she would have wished; but she was a little proud of Martha too because Martha walked the world and chose her own life.

She could respect making that choice. She made it herself, every nanosecond of her existence.

*

Amelia Pond was something of a convenience. He needed help; _she_ needed help, rest, recuperation, desperately; and Amelia Pond called out to her, and Amelia Pond’s danger called out even moreso. He always did best when there was a mystery, danger, some outward focus. And she always did best when there were young sparks about her.

Amelia Pond was young, younger than Susan or Vicki or Dodo or Polly or Nyssa or any of them had been, but already she could see that spark, that glimmer of starfire in little Amelia Pond, and she thought Amelia Pond was probably just exactly who he needed at that moment.

*

He chose to go back for Amy, young adult Amy, and he chose to go back for Amy’s fiancé Rory. And Amy’s dreams and surface thoughts were often all about her boys, but sometimes, sometimes she walked Amy’s dreams and Amy welcomed her gladly.

*

“Hey, old girl, hey,” he said softly, softly. He talked to her even more these days, after she’d taken that odd little human form that was strangely bigger on the inside. He talked and he talked, in the constant and forlorn hope that she would talk back, never mind that they had always communicated quite well, as she sometimes liked to remind him with irritated little blips and the occasional aggravated spark.

She was quiet now, though, quiet and sad, and he could hear it in her subdued hum. So he stroked her console, patted her monitors, swung on her seat to give her comfort. “Never you worry,” he said. “We’ll find new friends. We always do, right? We always do.”

She sighed a breeze through her console room, and he closed his eyes and leaned into it, and she could feel his own sadness and loneliness.

Oh, they had adventures. They had grand, mad adventures, the madman with his blue box, and they belonged together in ways no other TARDIS and so-called lord of time had, in the days when so many more of them had existed together. But they had never been enough for each other. They had always needed somebody else to perform for, to work with and play around. They had always needed that extra little spark of starfire that came from at least one other companion.

And somewhere, she knew, in some time, a young woman was waiting for the opportunity to make a choice.


End file.
